Pasolini's Critique of the Avant-Garde Revisited in artpress Flashback
The artpress archive has reissued Guy Scarpetta's essay from 1984, which was featured in artpress n°84, published in September 1984, on pages 32-35. This piece analyzes Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1966 work, 'The End of the Avant-Garde,' where he critiques the Italian neo-avant-garde figures like Sanguineti and Balestrini for their reductionist approach to language and their fixation on progress. Pasolini suggests that art should delve into unspoken community dialogues and critiques secularism while upholding Catholic values. He differentiates between 'cinema of poetry' and 'poet's cinema,' connecting his later films to concepts of evil and original sin. Scarpetta ultimately argues that Pasolini's notion of 'impurity' acts as a modern response to avant-garde intolerance.
Key facts
- Guy Scarpetta's essay on Pasolini originally published in artpress n°84, September 1984, pp. 32-35.
- Pasolini's 1966 article 'The End of the Avant-Garde' attacked Italian neo-avant-garde (Sanguineti, Balestrini).
- Pasolini criticized avant-garde for abstract negation, 'terror of reality,' and 'neo-Zhdanovism.'
- He proposed art as exploration of unsaid, pre-bourgeois heritage, Christian scandal, and body language.
- Pasolini predicted avant-garde transgression would cause 'nostalgia for the code.'
- His 'cinema of poetry' sees reality as language, cinema as its written form, referencing Dante.
- Pasolini's 'abjuration' moved from utopian 'Trilogy of Life' to dark 'Salò' and 'Saint Paul.'
- Scarpetta highlights Pasolini's primacy of physical sensation and desire as criteria for freedom.
Entities
Artists
- Pier Paolo Pasolini
- Guy Scarpetta
- Jacques Henric
- René de Ceccatty
- Sanguineti
- Balestrini
- Gadda
- Dante
- Dreyer
- Mizoguchi
- Christian Metz
- Gilles Deleuze
- Sartre
- Cournot
- Barthes
- Moravia
- Eco
- Calvino
- Ferrara
- Proust
- Musil
- Boulez
- Visconti
- Warhol
- Marc Gervais
- Gramsci
- Brecht
- Strehler
Institutions
- artpress
- PCI (Italian Communist Party)
- Office catholique du cinéma
Locations
- Italy
- Frioul
- Rome
- Pisa
Sources
- artpress —